


Below the Surface

by deathmallow



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: 69th Games, District Four, F/M, Victors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-14
Updated: 2013-03-14
Packaged: 2017-12-04 17:04:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/713047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathmallow/pseuds/deathmallow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The year of the 69th Games, Annie Cresta met Finnick Odair.  The rest, as they say, is history.  But history is never straightforward and simple as it sounds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Below the Surface

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MiHnn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiHnn/gifts).



> For **MiHnn** , requesting the progression of Finnick and Annie's relationship, preferably from Annie's POV.
> 
> Thanks for K and M for the fantastic beta suggestions they gave me. :)
> 
> Warnings for non-explicit mentions of violence, death, the Games, and sexual slavery, as well as several mentions of consensual teenage sexuality, where one or both parties (by US standards) are still legally underage.

Giving the gumbo yet another stir and another dash of hot sauce when her mama’s back was turned, Annie was surprised when Nainsi Cresta said, “You stop it now with adding more spice to that, Annie.”

“But Mama—it’s better this way.” It really was. As it stood right now, the gumbo was unpardonably bland to her tongue, rather than dancing with flavors like it ought. 

“I know it and you know it,” Nainsi acknowledged, wiping her hands dry on a dishcloth, “but Capitol mouths ain’t used to it. We burn ‘em with too much spice, they’ll be staying at another hotel next spring.” Annie quickly realized the wisdom of that. The Crestas’ hotel was utterly dependent on people coming and staying and paying for it, and if they chased the tourists away with bad service or bad food, they’d be at the cannery working the slime lines before long. Her parents hadn’t scrimped and saved to buy this place just to have that happen.

Still—the gumbo was _terrible_. Looking at her daughter, Nainsi shook her head and smiled. “Too good a cook to not do justice to your food, huh? Leave the guests’ gumbo for me from now on. You go fetch them up now, Annie. Lunch in ten minutes.”

April and May were always the busiest months for bored Capitol tourists coming down to Four. The coast was beautiful in the spring, when the raw, wet chill of winter had evaporated and the thick humidity of summer hadn’t descended yet. Nobody would be here in July during the worst of it anyway—that was during the Games and no self-respecting Capitol citizen would be anywhere else but the Capitol for that.

She left her shoes off and hurried down the boardwalk. Picking out the dozen guests staying at their place from among the crowd all along the beach was no easy task. She cringed, seeing again that some of them had decided to sunbathe naked.

Gnaea Hope, the film star, thankfully had her shorts on, and her skimpy bikini top, but she also had company on her blanket. Finnick Odair, the victor from four years ago, was sitting there laughing at her jokes. Annie looked at him. He must be eighteen now, the usual age for a volunteer. But he’d been so appealing that apparently Mags Robichaux had gambled that he’d appeal to the Capitol enough to keep him alive when he was reaped. Apparently she’d guessed right. She thought he was even better looking at eighteen than fourteen, but from the newscasts and all, it sounded like he’d taken the usual unspoken Four tenet of _Be nice and keep the Capitol happy_ a little too far. The number of people he’d been photographed with, and some of the situations, went beyond playing nice. She’d heard murmurs, close to Victors’ Bayou as they were, that the Odair boy had won too young, too immature. They said that he was too easy for the Capitol to sway, unlike a seventeen or eighteen-year-old who knew their own mind a little better would have been. “I’ve been sent to tell you lunch is being served, Miss Hope,” she said politely.

Hope gave her a wide, white-toothed grin. “Excellent! Finnick will be joining us.” She patted Finnick’s thigh. She thought she caught a moment of tension in that lithe, cat-lean body, though she didn’t know why. She didn’t even flinch at her just inviting Finnick along. Guests did that all the time—invited themselves to each other’s hotels, or inviting Mayor Solange or even one of the victors from their houses a few miles inland up on the bayou. Carrick Weston, Four’s long-term male mentor before Finnick, had complimented her sister Unalla’s special coconut doberge cake last year. 

It was all the more gracious considering Carrick must have done it specifically knowing what a luxury it was. None of the Capitol folk ever knew how much expense it was to get the damn coconut from Eleven, however they grew it there, just so the guests could have that treat. Jolly Frill, the thirteen-year-old son of one of the Capitol’s most prominent acting families, already a child star on their daytime serial shows, had asked her just last spring where he could “pick a banana”. Typical Capitol, Annie thought with a sigh, so oblivious to where everything came from and how it worked.

But they had that coconut cake today because it had gotten so popular that the guests expected it now. As Finnick got to his feet and dusted the sand off his shorts, Hope even said cheerfully, “Have you tasted the famous Cresta Coconut Cake yet, Finny?” _Finny?_ “It’s delightful.”

“No,” Finnick said softly, reaching for his red t-shirt lying discarded in the sand. He looked like he was in a hurry to put it on, tugging it down over his hips before he turned to follow Hope up towards the hotel.

Finnick Odair, for being caught up by the Capitol, hadn’t lost everything of being a good, well-raised boy from Four. He said “ma’am” and “sir” to Nainsi and Danforth Cresta, complimented Unalla’s cake, and like the rest of the Four natives, discreetly spooned some hot sauce into the bland gumbo. “Thank you for the meal,” he said softly to Annie as she was clearing the plates.

“You and the other victors are welcome back anytime, Finnick,” Annie’s mama said, touching him lightly on the arm as she made her farewells, like most Four women would. Touching a person meant that people cared. Annie noticed the slight flinch again, puzzled by it. But as soon as lunch was over, there was the dinner service to handle; potatoes to be peeled, bread to make, and all of that.

Unalla was already helping in the kitchen, so Annie got sent upstairs to service the rooms. She often ended up with that job, as the youngest. By now, she was well used to it. She was no longer surprised by the filth and mess the guests left in the rooms. The dirty clothes strewn everywhere were normal, with the guests just expecting the Crestas to have clean and neatly folded laundry back to them in the morning.. The soiled tissues and cigarette butts and beer bottles and used condoms that didn’t quite make the wastebasket didn’t disgust her now—she had a good pair of rubber gloves for that. She was used to having to call her daddy to repair a hole in the wall, or get a new lamp to replace one that was broken. The damages got added into the bill and nobody ever questioned it, throwing the money down like it meant nothing.

After cleaning a half-dozen rooms, relieved that only one of them was a genuine mess from partying, she was heading for Gnaea Hope’s when the door opened and Finnick Odair slipped out. His hair was mussed and his skin still bore the flush and faint sheen of sweat that told Annie exactly what he’d been doing. “I’ll come back,” she blurted, even as she was trying to not be disgusted, and not by the thought of the nasty, soiled sheets, and that it had been Finnick Odair screwing a Capitol girl in them. It was bad enough when he was doing it in the Capitol and they saw it on the celebrity newscasts, but to flaunt it right here at home ? Had he no shame at all? 

Finnick heard her and just for a moment, she saw the look on his face. Desperation, disgust, and oh yes, apparently he had shame because it was right there—he honestly looked like he was struggling to not cry. His eyes were a little wet, glittering too bright. As she watched, it was like heput a mask on and suddenly that bright, gorgeous smile was there, careless and nonchalant. “Sorry, Angie—”

“It’s Annie,” she told him, startled at the sudden change.

“Annie,” he agreed amiably, “but I’ve gotta go.” He headed down the stairs in a hurry.

She ducked into the room across the hall and busied herself picking up the bottles and orange peels and clothes, cheeks suddenly hot as she couldn’t help but think about what it all meant. The look on his face had been real, when he thought nobody was going to see him as he struggled for composure. Her mind seemed to take her to one inevitable conclusion: Finnick was taking _keep the Capitol happy_ to an entirely new level. She felt sick to her stomach imagining it. Could that actually be true? Why did nobody know about it?

She realized part of it was Finnick’s sheer prominence. Even in his heyday, Carrick hadn’t been as heartily embraced by the Capitol as Finnick was. Oh, they’d liked him. The Capitol loved any Four victor and wanted more of them and that was why they had the discreet latitude to train their tributes, unlike the poor pathetic sorts out in the outlying districts. But for Carrick, there had been other victors that were more beloved, more likely to be the escort for some Capitol star, more often featured in the celebrity press from when Annie was little—for the males there had been Haymitch from Twelve, Angus and Wyandot from Ten, Blight from Seven, and the like. 

Four had gone twenty-five years without a male victor by the time Finnick came along. Lateen Solis had won the 57th Games, but beside the powerful and enduring image of Mags as Four’s female mentor, a Four girl knew her status as a victor would always be somewhat in the shade, so Lateen had a year or two of attention and then quietly went to her place up in the Bayou among the other victors. The dark horse districts had done well in that period. Four was getting almost embarrassed by twelve years without a victor to begin before Lateen, and then it was the lack of another boy victor, nervously waiting for the Capitol’s favor to turn to petulant rage when they didn’t deliver what had been expected of them. So Finnick’s victory had been a relief. They’d sort of expected the Capitol would love him because of that, so maybe that had contributed to nobody really remarking on his prominence as something unusual, even if they sighed over how he seemed to take to Capitol adoration like a fish to water. Everybody had just written him off as sort of a Capitol sacrifice: too eagerly anticipated and too naively young. 

She felt like the situation was a pool of dark, still water and where everyone else saw only their reflection, seeing Finnick like that had suddenly plunged her face into it to see all the hidden things below the surface. It frightened her a little. But at the same time, if she was frightened, she could only imagine how he must be. Everything suddenly made a terrible sense.

After dinner she went for a walk on the beach, trying to make sense of her thoughts, but knowing it wasn’t like she could walk up the bayou to Mags Robichaux’s house and just _ask_. Ever since she and Fluke had broken up over the winter, her evening strolls were solo. Tonight she was glad of that.

The solitude didn’t last long, though. She saw someone out swimming in the spring dusk. Early in spring as it was, the water was still chilly—it wouldn’t be at its warmest until August or September. Most of the guests didn’t swim anyway. She quickly recognized Finnick as he came out of the water, dripping wet. “Oh, it’s you,” he said, flashing Annie another of those careless, empty smiles. “Sorry about all that, but…” He gave a shrug, as if it didn’t matter. Something twisted inside her to see it, remembering his eyes.

“They make you do it, don’t they?” She’d blurted out the words before she could think better of it.

He stopped, mid-rub of his towel, and stared at her. “What?”

She glanced around instinctively, even though she knew nobody was there, but she stepped closer anyway and lowered her voice. “You and…the Capitol people. You have to go with them and act the way you do, don’t you?”

He was silent for a few long moments. Then he gave an awkward laugh, draping the towel around his shoulders, his wet red hair dripping in his eyes. “Really? This is how it goes?” He sounded like he was talking half to himself. “My own family can’t quite see it—I _make_ them think it’s just me come back from the arena all strange and that I’ve taken my gratitude for that stupid trident too far—and a _hotel girl_ figures it out in five minutes.”

She hadn’t wanted to be right, but from the odd hitching sobs of laughter like he was about to start crying , her discomfort at being correct was nothing against his hardship in actually living it. Without thinking, she reached out and put a hand on his shoulder, like she would for anyone obviously upset and in pain. Seeing how he flinched at it, though, she drew her hand back like it was burned. “I’m sorry, I didn’t…you probably don’t much like people touching you, do you?” He was definitely in the wrong district for that.

Somehow she found herself sitting down with him in the dunes, bare toes dug into the sand. Most Four teenagers ended up there in the shade of the beachgrass for some privacy, going there to make out or even have sex if they had the pocket money for some condoms. She’d been there plenty of times with Fluke. But Finnick didn’t try to get her clothes off. He didn’t even try to touch her. He just sat there with his knees drawn up to his chest, arms around his knees, telling her what it had been like to have his body sold to strangers for the last two summers. The first hesitant words came out, and before long it was a constant flow, ebbing and then bursting forth again in a new surge, like the waves on the beach. 

“I didn’t think they’d ever bother me here in Four. I thought…but then she showed up, and she made it obvious she wanted me,” and he made another of those choked sobs, “and it’s not like I could _refuse_.”

Of course he couldn’t. She looked at him, hating the Capitol more than she ever had in her short life.. “I’ll never tell,” she reassured him. She was the only one that knew who had been in bed with Gnaea Hope. Anyone doing the laundry would assume it was just the usual bedhopping that often happened in tourist season. Sometimes people slept with the people they were married to; more often, they didn’t. It was as if out of sight of the Capitol they felt confident no word of what they did in the sun and salt air of Four would ever follow them home. “I’m very good at keeping secrets.”

“Thank you,” he said thickly. It felt like a terrible burden to her in that moment; keeping a secret like this. But from how he was looking at her, how desperate he sounded when he talked about it, it seemed he had needed this.

“How do you stand it?” she asked him softly. “I mean…”

“I think about the people I’m keeping safe,” he said, not looking at her, fingers twitching nervously as if missing the comfort of something to touch. “My family, the rest of the people in Four. Because…if I don’t…” He chewed his lip nervously, like the boy he was rather than the sex symbol he acted like on the cameras for the Capitol. “You don’t get a second chance,” he told her. “Unless you’re so boring or so ugly even makeup can’t make you look attractive, you’re going to be sold off as long as someone wants you. The choice is whether you need a lesson in the consequences first.”

“A lesson?” She didn’t understand. This was a whole new world to her.

Finnick leaned a little closer, a look of pain in his green eyes. “Haymitch from Twelve, he…made the Capitol look stupid. So President Snow killed his family and his girlfriend. Then he still sold him for all these years, because he may be getting less popular, but there are a few people yet that want him. Now Haymitch is the example to the rest of us. It’s going to happen to a victor. It’s just a matter of whether you’ll see your people suffer before you learn to accept that. Johanna Mason had parents and a sister and brother. She tried to say ‘no’. So now she doesn’t have a family anymore.”

She stared at him, pieces again coming together for her and painting a horrible picture. She remembered now a newscast from the 67th Games saying that Johanna Mason’s family had been killed in an unfortunate accident. Then she thought about Haymitch, who’d been on camera for so long, popular for his snarky wit and she realized, her stomach churning, that he’d been forced to do what Finnick had since even before she was born. “I thought he just couldn’t stand how bad Twelve was and he was…it may be the Capitol, but it _had_ to be mesmerizing to a dirt-poor kid after a place like Twelve,” she whispered. 

“Twelve is no great shakes,” Finnick agreed, and she remembered he’d seen it on his Victory Tour. “The people hate him there because they think he’s sold out rather than focusing on mentoring.” He said it matter-of-factly. “And he’s been doing it so long—the whoring, I mean,” he said the word with such pain and venom she could barely stand to hear it, “that you can see it doesn’t even _matter_ to him anymore. ““

She could only sit there and listen as he talked about some things far beyond her understanding, but knowing instinctively that he needed to get it out there. “Haymitch, he’s been really good to me. But I look at him and…and I have other victors here and there’s a good chance I can mentor a tribute to a victory, so I’m not exactly like him, but…” His voice cracked. “When I look at him sometimes I’m terrified that’s going to be me in fifteen years. People already are wondering about me here. And…I can tell I’m getting more _used_ to all of it.” 

She let him talk; it was more like rambling, really, as if he couldn’t hope to stop himself from explaining it to her so she would understand it all, and so understand him. From that Annie could see how off-balance he was—in most circumstances their people here in Four all knew better than to go around telling other peoples’ secrets. He told her about the patrons and the things they did to him, about Johanna and how the two of them tried to keep each other sane, about how Haymitch looked after both of them, about the other victors and their kindnesses to him. She couldn’t say much in return except the occasional validation or question to keep him going. Any reassurances of _It’ll get better_ would sound fake. He was living in hell and there was no sign anything would change for him. The risk of him eventually becoming like Haymitch, burned out by the beds of too many strangers, and loathed by people back home, was acutely real. 

All she could give him in the end was her own opinion. It was all she had the right to offer. When finally he fell silent, it was full dark. He must have been talking for a couple of hours, she realized suddenly. “I think…I think that you’re brave. And you’re a good person, Finnick. So you know there’ll always be one person in Four who isn’t a victor who’ll listen. Who’ll be your friend.” That sounded like more than either Johanna or Haymitch had to claim. Maybe she was fooling herself, but between her and the others in Victor’s Bayou who knew and who cared, she hoped maybe it would make a small difference to an eighteen-year-old who seemed to be carrying the weight of the world on those shoulders.

He looked at her like she’d handed him the moon, and all she’d done was listen. But as they walked back up the boardwalk together, she thought maybe that was what he’d needed. The other victors were all so much older and she didn’t doubt they looked after him; Finnick had said as much, and the Four victors always looked like a close-knit community. But they were more like uncles and grandmothers to him, not friends, and they’d been through it all themselves. Like it sounded with the likes of Haymitch, the horror was probably muted for them because of it. She was only a year younger than Finnick, had never had to endure what he had, and so she felt it intensely.

They met at the dunes again the next night. This time they didn’t talk about the Capitol. They talked about Unalla’s cake, and how Una refused to tell Annie just how she’d altered the recipe from Grannie Shaevonn’s notes until the day she finally left the hotel business. They talked about gumbo, and how the Odairs ran a fishing boat, how his brother Keith was going to captain a shrimp skimmer soon, and his sister was second mate now on one of the big impressive offshore tuna boats plying the deep waters—the same one as Unalla’s fiancé Lance, she discovered. She listened to him talking about being out on the sea. “I’ve never been out past the edge of the bay, and that was on school trips,” she said wistfully. “I’ve always been busy with the hotel.” Stealing a few hours to go swimming was tough enough. 

“I’ll take you,” he promised, a glint of excitement suddenly there in his eyes. “Could you maybe get the day off?”

“Maybe on Sunday, if I work fast in the morning to get ready for the next group of guests.” Trouble was, when one group of tourists left each Sunday on the weekly Capitol transport, another group replaced them. “I usually get Sunday afternoon off.” She might have to promise Una some special favor for taking over a bit more of the work, but she was confident her sister would do it. Unalla was good as gold on it, especially when Annie teased her that she could hardly give her crap for wanting to go fishing, considering she was out on the bay almost every day off with Lance, learning what she could about the business so she could more easily take her place on a boat after their marriage. 

She flew through her chores Sunday morning, what ones she could do without the guests out of their room, and then raced down to the docks. Finnick introduced his older brother Keith, his sister Amariah, and his parents, Coral and Donnell. Finnick was the only one who’d inherited his mother’s bright bronze hair; the other two had their father’s dark good looks. “Annie’s family makes a great cake, but she’s never been out past the bay,” he explained. With that, the Odairs brightened and assured her that for a Four girl, it was a shame, and of course they’d be happy to have her on the boat for their Sunday shrimping.

As she sat on a box on deck, enjoying the fresh air and sun, trying to accustom her body to the slow rolling and pitching motions and vibrations of the boat beneath her, she heard a snatch of conversation between Coral and her son up towards the wheelhouse.

“…so good to see you enthusiastic about something again, Finn…”

Annie glanced away, the wind whipping strands of her hair into her face as she turned into the wind and the rush of it in her ears stole the rest of the words. There was a lump in her throat at the tenderness and relief in Coral Odair’s voice. Obviously she thought her boy was starting to find himself again. She didn’t know that he wasn’t wandering lost, that he’d been pulled off the path and tied up there by people who would keep him for their own ends. Annie didn’t see, but she could imagine the look Finnick must have had on his face at his mother’s words, that surprise mingled with an unbearable relief, the same look he’d had when she spoke to him.

The Odairs looked at her with something like relief, as if she was the one who’d somehow set Finnick straight. She didn’t know what to tell them about that.

He touched her shoulder gingerly as they said goodbye in the purple dusk, after he walked her back to the hotel. Then, like something spooked, he was gone in a hurry.

Two nights later he held her hand while they were talking about their childhood pets out in the dunes.

It was three weeks before he kissed her, the barest brush like the flutter of moth wings against her lips. “Well, I wouldn’t mind if you did it again,” she told him, giving him a slightly foolish grin. It had to be his choice. But when he leaned in again, less tentative this time, she responded eagerly.

Alongside the growing physical intimacy, he trusted her more with the things that mattered. They moved from talking about pets and cakes and fishing to the Capitol, the arena—how it had felt to be in there. “What weapon are they teaching you in training?” he asked her.

“Spear,” she answered. Like every Four child, gym class right from kindergarten was a thinly veiled cover to start getting them fit and ready for the potential of the arena. At age twelve they each got tested and assigned a weapon to start training with in gym on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Some of them were practical—knives, spears, and the like—and those who wielded them were expected to make up for their mundane weapon somehow, with grace and style and charm, should they end up as a tribute. Some, like Finnick’s trident, were pure Capitol fancy nobody had ever used in Four industry, but they looked good on camera.

He looked her over, eyes suddenly coolly critical rather than warm and friendly. “Good. That’s good. You’re slim, Annie, but you’re tall. The spear will keep them at bay and it doesn’t take much as strength to use it.” She looked at him, at the lean muscles in his shoulders and back beneath his shirt, and thought about how much smaller he’d been at fourteen, how he’d probably struggled with that heavy trident.

“If they call me, I’m fit to go.” Since she was approved last year, Annie was now considered old enough, trained enough, and promising enough to not need a volunteer to replace her. If _Annelle Cresta_ came out of the reaping slips this year or the next, she would be expected to stand forth as Four’s female tribute. “How bad is it?” she asked him. Nobody ever dared to ask a victor that. It was too impertinent. But she felt like she could ask him just about anything by this point.

He stared at her a long moment, as if frozen by his memories. “The lucky ones? They end up in the tribute morgue,” he finally said. “Because if you survive, you live with what you’ve become. And what they’ll make you into.” There was no need to ask which _they_ he was referring to as he punctuated the sharp word with the stab of a stick into a dune, as if in his mind he was taking it out on his tormentors. 

The months wore on. He gave her a mother-of-pearl fishhook pendant he’d carved himself, teasing, “ _Now_ you’re ready for a fishing boat, good luck charm and all.” He taught her to cast net. She taught him to make biscuits. 

July was there before she knew it, weeks of kisses and touches and lying on the dunes talking going by in a whirl. The night before the reaping, she was the one who dared to make the move this time. She’d bought the condoms the weekend before. Knowing what he was heading back into, both as a mentor and a sex slave, and knowing her name could be called tomorrow, she told him frankly, “I want you, Finn. But only if you want me.” She didn’t want him feeling obligated or eager to please.

She’d thought it had been pretty good with Fluke after the first few times, and Finnick obviously knew what he was doing. But more than the certainty in his touch, it was seeing the look of amazement and joy on his face that gave her a fierce surge of pleasure.

“I didn’t know it could ever be like that,” he said finally when they’d caught their breath. She couldn’t quite help a quick moment of satisfaction that this part of Finnick was hers alone. Nobody had it, not his patrons, not even his friend Johanna. 

She sneaked back towards the hotel near dawn, probably looking like a wreck, but not sorry at all. He caught her by the hand at the porch, wrapped his arms around her. He smelled comforting, like the salty sea, from the quick swim they’d taken together afterwards. “I love you, Annie Cresta,” he said in her ear. 

“I love you, Finnick Odair,” she said in return, not wanting to let go.

That year, it wasn’t her who was called. Her eyes met Finnick’s and though his mask was back in place again for the cameras, she knew he was relieved.

The second day of the Games, she watched a tall, strong girl from the far south of Four get outfought with knives and slaughtered by Two’s girl. The Career pack broke apart early that year. It happened sometimes, when they just couldn’t work together to take out the rest of the field before turning on each other. She saw a newscast about Finnick being filmed at a club with Gnaea Hope. Another newscast reported Johanna Mason was acting wilder than ever, showing her drunk and pretty much half-naked in another club, hanging all over One’s handsome male mentor, Gloss Donovan.

The third evening of the Games, Carrick came to visit her. Sitting on the porch in one of the rockers, he looked over at her. Even nearly fifty as he was, he was still a good-looking man. The crows’ feet at the corner of his blue-green eyes and the grey hairs mingled with the brown, to her mind, only gave him character, but she knew the Capitol would be horrified by them. “So you’re Finnick’s girl,” he said finally, after having looked her over for a good minute in silence.

“Yes.” No point denying it. “I am.”

“How much do you know?”

“I know about his ‘lovers’, Mister Carrick,” because even knowing he’d come to question her, like every other Four child, she’d always been taught to be polite to her elders, and especially to a victor. They, and the dead tributes, were the ones who sacrificed the most to keep Four prosperous compared to the poor districts. “If that’s what you’re asking.”

Carrick nodded. “That’s dangerous stuff to know, Annie. I’d rather he hadn’t told you, but…chances are he needed someone. I’m too damn old to be his confidante.” Annie didn't ask why Lateen hadn't filled that role. Lateen might be closest to him in age, but she was still a dozen years older than Finnick. Carrick was respecting her with honesty so she listened rather than getting smartmouthed and defensive. “Can you keep it secret?”

“He asked me not to tell. Told me about the risk.” It had been one of the hardest promises to make of her life, in some ways, to know that he was suffering and nobody even understood it. But she knew it had to be that way. That didn’t mean she liked it, or that she liked the thought of him, even now, probably being undressed in some strange Capitol person’s bedroom, their hands all over him just as hers had been. “I won’t tell anyone.”

“You’re at risk now yourself. They may assume you’re just some frivolous district flirtation now, but if you stay by him, _someone_ will notice you matter to him. And it probably won’t become public, because that’s too much to explain why the Capitol’s playboy has a little district girlfriend, but it will get to Snow, believe me.” Carrick looked at her, the intensity of his gaze lending emphasis to his words. “You’re in the game now, like it or not. If you and Finnick do everything right, chances are you’ll be fine and when, someday, the patrons stop paying, you two can marry. If anything either of you does meddles with any of his plans, though…it doesn’t even have to be something about you two.”

“I heard what happened to Haymitch Abernathy’s family,” she said, mouth suddenly dry at the thought of it. “And Johanna Mason’s. I understand.” She was nothing to President Snow, just another Four girl, just another piece of leverage to use against Finnick. One slip and she could very likely have an “unfortunate accident” someday. She looked over at him. “Thank you for warning me. And being honest.”

He nodded in acknowledgment of that. As he turned to go, he glanced back over his shoulder and said, “Take care of the boy. He’s a good sort.” She didn’t doubt that old Mags had probably sent him, given that she was the unquestioned head of the victors. She also didn’t doubt that he would be reporting to the other victors on the conversation. Apparently she wasn’t quite welcome in their circle, and that was fine, she hadn’t earned that in the arena as they had. But with Carrick’s words, it seemed they’d let it be known they’d tacitly approved of her and Finnick, so long as they were smart about it.

On the eighth day of the Games, Joy Cloudmist reported the tragedy that with her last movie only half finished, Gnaea Hope had been found dead in her home, apparently having committed suicide by poison. Annie shuddered. She wasn't exactly certain she was right, and chances were she could never know for sure. But Finnick had opened her eyes to that hidden world and now she was unsettled by her suspicion that by forcing herself on Finnick here in Four, Hope had crossed a line and risked the secret being discovered and publicized. President Snow apparently had watchful eyes here in Four and he had found out, and as Finnick had told her, Snow didn't give second chances. Carrick's warning to her to watch herself and be careful suddenly took on a greater urgency.

District One won the 69th Games, although Sable Todorov went to her victor interview in a wheelchair. The Capitol was lamenting the tragic, brave girl who would never walk again, even as they cringed in disgust at her obvious physical imperfection. Annie knew with certainty Sable would never be shoved into Capitol beds. 

She wouldn’t wait for him at the train station, or at his home in Victor’s Bayou. That might attract too much attention. But she would be there for him, for whatever wounds he had suffered this year. Moody and irritable as he could be sometimes, she knew the goodness in him, the kindness, the man he really was beneath all the pain and the pretense. He needed her, but she needed him too, because with him she’d dared things she’d never dreamed. She’d found what she really believed in and what she would do for it. She rubbed the fishhook pendant between her fingertips, thinking that he needed luck far more than her. _And I love you too, Finnick Odair. No matter the hardship._


End file.
